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> some might hate it, but I liked it during my CS studies Isn't a lot of the frustration regarding Fortran aimed towards libraries written by PhDs who don't kn
by vanderZwan 7y ago
> some might hate it, but I liked it during my CS studies
Isn't a lot of the frustration regarding Fortran aimed towards libraries written by PhDs who don't know a thing about writing maintainable code (because that's not their specialty - not their fault really) and on top of that are so intelligent and specialized in their own field that you end up with even more impenetrable code, while also being dependent on said library because nobody else understands the problem domain in question to the same degree as those PhDs did (emphasis did, to make things worse[0]) when they wrote the library?
That sounds like a frustration layer cake to me, but it's not exactly the language's fault.
[0] https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/ai-no-longer-understand-my-phd-dissertation-and-what-this-means-for-mathematics-education-1d40708f61c https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/ai-no-longer-understand-my-phd-...
- C1sc0cat 7y agoI recall at my first job improving a PHD candidates Fortran code that ran experiments on our various mixing rigs. His initial code's interface was "?" and you entered integer numbers to execute various functions, and there where multiple levels here so you had to memorise the numbers and where you where in the program :-) I added prompts (with Mixed case Hollerith statements) that showed the options at each level and what they did. This was to reduce the risk of a botched run which when we scaled up to 1:1 in an 8-1 m dia tank could cost £20k - the cost of a small flat at the time